The corrosion of innocence.
Am I the only one or do you also feel the same way about growing up.
As the experience adds up, you gradually like being yourself less and less.
Every time you use that experience to bail yourself out smartly, you feel a little more shy of the mirror.
You keep remembering what you used to be as a child or even youth or even a young adult but you fail to remember how was it that you had come to be that person. How could you maintain that state of mind and thought process.
You promise yourself that you will try to recall that mental makeup. And if you can't remember how to, then you will do what good people are supposed to do and think the way they do.
You keep asking yourself, am I a bad person. Can I ever be a good person again?
Then you wonder, if you are not able to like what you have become, how can you expect the people around to like you, love is a farther cry.
You think it is still manageable, you can not expect everyone to like you. Then the next step down the stair, what if they hate you, what if they find you unbearable, difficult to live with.
Is it going to be a lonely life even among people?
Then comes the fear and the self blame and then the rebound, justifying self. The thousand instances justifying why I have become the way I have become. And then some more additions to the library of such instances with the new found energy generated by the need to stop the self blame, and guilt. Then comes the confidence to continue in the mature state of mind which had made you miss your younger self.
Then you continue on this path, till you stumble again against a silent moment that finds your mind idle and throws some memories your way to break the silence and entertain itself. And then you go through the spiral again and come out a little more "mature" a little more dislikable.
And it goes on, till someday, we reach the bottom of the spiral. We realise that the moment of realisation can be the origin again. That being likable or dislikable is relative, and varies with culture and the company you are in.
That justifying wrong actions as a reaction can never be given precedence over the effort to be good again, self-blame can be stopped by just stopping the blame, by forgiving self. An extra boosting dose of justifications of past wrong doings is only going to boomerang.
Then comes the moment of ultimate wisdom, that even the one who has written the second part of this article, herself cannot stop herself from going down that spiral that corrodes innocence, even after reaching the bottom of it once and having soared out of it successfully in the past.
Now is it my goodness reminiscent of my younger self that made me write this article as a mirror to remind me to continue my efforts to revive the young innocent heart, or did I write this to justify that the spiral is unavoidable.
Time to chase the mouse in my head again. I will be back after some days, meanwhile you find your own mouse to keep that overactive, overthinking brain of yours busy.